Blessing the Next Generation, Too

My husband David first met the Englands in the Bay Area in 1967, when all three were members of the Palo Alto Ward. Gene, of course, was already known as a thinker and a doer, and he could always be counted on to move a class from rote repetition into meaningful discussion and thinking. My association with Gene was as a member of the BYU English faculty. Back when only a handful of people took a serious interest in Mormon literature, Gene was one of its champions. The Englands’ Provo home was a salon, the site of musical events as well as readings and discussions. The memories are vivid: Claudia Laycock and myself performing a Brahms sonata for violin and piano while the Englands, seemingly with an effortless wave of the hand, provided the refreshments and the audience.

So many of Gene’s friends have paid tribute to the way in which his kindness and influence blessed their sons and daughters as well. Many years ago our oldest son returned from a mission that, through no fault of his, had been a discouraging and ungratifying experience. It was midsemester; he needed to do something for a few weeks that would restore his sense of joy in life and his confidence in his own future. We called Gene and Charlotte in London and asked if they had room for a latecomer in the semester abroad program they were directing. The real answer was “No”—there were no more beds—but of course they enthusiastically invited our son to join them. He spent the rest of the semester with them, accommodated on their living room couch in their London digs. Relatively speaking, money and time are the easy sacrifices; privacy is the really hard one. We will always be grateful.

Many years later our youngest son attended UVSC, preparing to transfer to BYU. However, UVSC turned out to be a first-rate experience in and of itself, mostly because of the two classes he took from Gene. He reports how much he enjoyed the freedom to express himself; no class member, he said, had any need to fear being put down for any comment. And we knew that if our son wanted to learn passion, kindness, and integrity, then being around Eugene England was like studying painting under Rembrandt.

—Karen Lynn Davidson
From Irreantum 3.3 (Autumn 2001): 54